Congressman Sought Bribes, Indictment Says

WASHINGTON, June 4 — Representative William J. Jefferson, the Louisiana Democrat at the center of an investigation that included an F.B.I. raid at his Congressional office and accusations that he hid $90,000 in bribe money in his home freezer, was indicted Monday by a federal grand jury on 16 corruption-related felony counts.
The 94-page indictment in Virginia, returned after a two-year inquiry, accused Mr. Jefferson of bribery, racketeering, conspiracy, money laundering, obstruction of justice and other offenses. It said that in December 2004 he solicited a bribe in a Congressional dining room.
The indictment said that from 2000 to 2005 Mr. Jefferson sought hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, sometimes in the form of stock and retainer fees, from nearly a dozen companies involved in oil, communications, satellite transmission, sugar and other businesses, often for projects to be carried out in Africa.
In return, the indictment charged, Mr. Jefferson used his official position in Congress, as a member of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on trade, to promote the companies’ business ventures — without disclosing his own financial stake in the deals.
The indictment said that Mr. Jefferson illegally engaged in a number of official acts to benefit himself and his family financially. He led official delegations to Africa, wrote letters to American and foreign officials, and assigned members of his staff to promote ventures in which he had a financial interest, according to the indictment, which also said he sought to promote deals in Nigeria, Ghana and Equatorial Guinea.
A representative of Mr. Jefferson said the lawmaker would not comment on the indictment, though an aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case said Mr. Jefferson had no intention of resigning his seat.
Mr. Jefferson’s lawyer, Robert Trout, said in a statement that his client was innocent and planned “to fight this indictment and clear his name.”
Mr. Trout said that although the government had conducted an extensive investigation into Mr. Jefferson’s activities, the indictment showed there was no evidence that he promised any legislative action. “There is no suggestion that he promised anyone any appropriations,” Mr. Trout said. “There were no earmarks. There were no government contracts.”
Democratic leaders in the House moved quickly to distance themselves from Mr. Jefferson, with some lawmakers calling for his resignation. Speaker Nancy Pelosi intends to convene a leadership meeting this week, aides said, to discuss taking away Mr. Jefferson’s seat on the Small Business Committee, his only remaining assignment.
“The charges in the indictment against Congressman Jefferson are extremely serious,” Ms. Pelosi said in a statement. “While Mr. Jefferson, just as any other citizen, must be considered innocent until proven guilty, if these charges are proven true, they constitute an egregious and unacceptable abuse of public trust and power.”
Last year, Ms. Pelosi drew criticism from the Congressional Black Caucus for removing Mr. Jefferson from his seat on the powerful Ways and Means panel. After he won re-election last year, Democratic leaders sought to appoint him to the Homeland Security Committee, but Republican leaders threatened to block the appointment and debate it on the House floor in the early months of the Democratic majority. He was not named to the committee.
Democratic aides said the House would almost certainly not vote to expel or censure Mr. Jefferson until his case had played out in court. The last member of the House to be expelled, aides said, was Representative James A. Traficant Jr., an Ohio Democrat, after a criminal conviction on bribery and racketeering charges in 2002.
In the midterm elections last year, Democrats campaigned on a pledge to remove the “culture of corruption” that they said had been a practice of the Republican majority.
The indictment of Mr. Jefferson, which had been expected by Democratic leaders, threatened to sully the party’s promise to bring an ethics overhaul to the 110th Congress.
The indictment also accused Mr. Jefferson of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, making him the first sitting lawmaker to be charged under the law.
He is accused of offering to bribe an unidentified Nigerian official in exchange for assistance with business activities in which Mr. Jefferson and several other unidentified family members had a financial interest.
Prosecutors said that in August 2005 Mr. Jefferson concealed $90,000 to $100,000 of the bribe money in a freezer in his Washington home. The money, an initial payment, intended for the Nigerian official, was separated into piles of $10,000, wrapped in aluminum foil and concealed inside frozen food containers.
According to documents in the case, Mr. Jefferson said that he needed the money to make a payment to a man identified by government officials as Atiku Abubaker, then Nigeria’s vice president who recently ran unsuccessfully for the country’s presidency.
The indictment does not identify Mr. Abubaker, but refers to a high-ranking official described as “Nigerian official A.” Mr. Abubaker has denied that he was the official.
Chuck Rosenberg, the United States attorney in Arlington, Va., who is in charge of the case, declined to comment on the identity of the Nigerian official at a news conference on Monday.
But Mr. Rosenberg said Mr. Jefferson’s actions were criminal. “Mr. Jefferson corruptly traded on his good office and on the Congress where he served as a member of the United States House of Representatives to enrich himself and his family through a pervasive pattern of fraud bribery and corruption that spanned many years and two continents,” he said.
In total, federal law enforcement officials said that Mr. Jefferson sought millions of dollars in bribes, but may have actually received less than $400,000 in illegal payments. If convicted of all the counts against him, Mr. Jefferson, who is 60, faces a maximum of 235 years in prison, although prosecutors suggested that such a long term would be unlikely.
The search of Mr. Jefferson’s office in May 2006, the first time a lawmaker’s office was ever searched in a criminal inquiry, touched off a fierce outcry from lawmakers, who complained the search interfered with their legislative prerogatives. Law enforcement authorities insisted that members of Congress could not be beyond the reach of the criminal law.
Litigation between Mr. Jefferson and the Justice Department over the materials seized in the search is now before a federal appeals court in the District of Columbia, and the issue of whether the search was constitutional remains unsettled. The Justice Department has been allowed access to some documents taken during the search, but other materials remain off limits to the government and were not used in the preparation of the indictment.
Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, said Monday that he would ask the House to vote to refer the indictment of Mr. Jefferson to the House ethics committee. His resolution would call for the ethics panel to report back to the House within a month on whether Mr. Jefferson should be removed from Congress.
“If the charges against Congressman Jefferson are true,” Mr. Boehner said, “he should be expelled from the House of Representatives or he should resign to spare his constituents and colleagues any further indignity.”
The charges have long been expected. Two people who were involved in transactions with Mr. Jefferson have already pleaded guilty to bribery-related offenses. Documents previously filed in the case, which outlined payments Mr. Jefferson received, made it apparent that he was a main target of the inquiry.
One of Mr. Jefferson’s business associates, Vernon L. Jackson, pleaded guilty to offering to pay Mr. Jefferson $400,000 to $1 million in exchange for Mr. Jefferson’s help in obtaining Nigerian business deals for iGate, a Kentucky telecommunications company that Mr. Jackson headed. Mr. Jackson was sentenced to more than seven years in prison and has been cooperating with the investigation.

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